מה קורה בכיתת הלינוקס בהוד השרון ?
הסבר על הקמת הכיתה והשיעוריםאתר בית הספר :http://www.hhds.org.il/יש לבחורעדכונים-- על השיעורים מחשביםברכותשי
About the proper roles of Hamakor board members
First of all, they should ruthlessly dictate that No Lecture Recordings Shall be Made Publicly Available by any Free Software Related Club, Unless They are Accompanied by Textual Transcripts. Just kidding :-) :-) :-) Now, the serious part. There are an interview with and a blog entry from current/former DPLs (leaders of the Debian project) at: http://lwn.net/Articles/174705/ http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/being-dpl The thing which striked me in both articles was the message that a DPL should be concerned with ensuring that the machinery works smoothly, that people can go on doing their work. A good DPL is someone who does not unnecessarily meddle with working processes. "Strong Leaders" are not likely to be able to accomplish their disruptive goals. A person, who wants to make a change, had better start or join a project and work within that project. He would be accomplish more than if he were sprinkled with the holy yellow liquid of the avian flu-infected egg as he was being enshrined with the leadership position. It reminds me of the E-mail discussion which we had in this mailing list few months ago about the proper roles of Hamakor board members. Some people wanted them to go and actually accomplish some things. Others (me, included) said that they should only help projectors, and that projectors (who could be also board members, or could be people outside of the board) are the ones to move and shake things. --- Omer -- Eli Marmor's Law: netiquette forbids people from replying "I agree with you" to messages in mailing lists, skewing discussions in favor of the troublemaker type of dissenters. My own blog is at http://tddpirate.livejournal.com/ My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone. They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which I may be affiliated in any way. WARNING TO SPAMMERS: at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Fwd: Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux:"Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]]
Private discussion, forwarded to the list with approval. If the discussion triggers someone to develop a Free Software Hebrew ASR engine (even if not perfect, but enough to save labor on transcribing lectures), then it will be worth it. --- Omer Forwarded Message From: Dov Grobgeld <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Omer Zak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux:"Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]] Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:10:17 +0200 Hi Omer, Indeed I ment to send my reply to the list, but made i mistake in the sending. But never mind. I didn't read the whole thread before I responded and I realized others said the same thing I meant to say publically. When working with volunteers there is no other way than begging, I believe. And giving positive feedback. This is true of free sw contributions, wikipedia, community volunteer work etc. If you (the collective you) are the reciever you should smile and thank the giver for what you received. Of course you have in parallell the right to demand the same service should be provided by the government, social services etc, in order not to be dependent on volunteers. Larry's lecture was the first work I ever worked on transcribing. And it wasn't easy, as Larry is using a special perl specific vocabulary. When listening it doesn't really matter whether he sais "simil" or "situal" or "sigil" (which is the word he used). But when transcribing you really have to understand it. Which is good per se, because it forces a different level of understanding of the lecture. The reader as well, has the advantage of seeing the exact words, which is another advantage of the transcription, that you can add to your list of transcription advantages. But the fact is a lot of times the contents is too casual for people to bother to make the effort. Or they want to hide the fact that they didn't understand everything. Or they might not be interested in learning enough to give a sensible translation. Most lectures are like irc conversation transcripts. It might be nice to read through quickly once. But it is not something that you want to return to. (That is not the case with Larry's talks though, which I feel are quite eternal. :-). I'm falling asleep so I'll stop here. Feel free to forward this email to the email list if you feel like it. Regards, Dov On 3/21/06, Omer Zak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello Dov, > You sent the following message to me in private but I assume that you > meant to sent it to discussions@hamakor.org.il based upon the language > which you used. For now, I am replying to you in private. > > Let's try to be creative and find a win-win solution to the problem. > > 1. You (the collective you) want recorded lectures ASAP, even if they > are not accompanied immediately with written transcripts. > > 2. Like everyone, I was born with limited begging rights. I can ask for > favors and beg for volunteer time only up to a limit. I prefer to use > those begging rights for other purposes, if possible. So I am looking > for ideas for getting those lectures transcribed without my having to > beg people for this. > > 3. I was trying to identify benefits to the hearing from availability of > transcripts for recorded lectures. Can you please look for additional > advantages for the hearing from those transcripts? > > Thanks, >--- Omer > > > On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 23:38 +0200, Dov Grobgeld wrote: > > Some sort of compromise must be found. On the one hand, it is not > > reasonable to deprive the hearing-abled of their perceived > > appreciation of listening to a recorded lecture, or tie the release of > > a recording until a transcription is ready. It would be similar to not > > releasing a book in Swahilii until a translation was available, e.g. > > in Swedish. I don't understand Swahilii, but I appreciate the fact > > that there are millions of people who do. But of course I would feel > > frustrated if there was something available just in Swahilii that I > > would very much like to take part of. > > > > These conflicts don't happen daily to most of us, as we don't live in > > an environment where we don't understand the language. But to Omer and > > other deaf, this, I assume, is the situation. > > > > The problem with transliterations is that we are all volunteers, and > > the only thing that Omer can do in this case is to ask us and hope for > > somebody to do it. (Him asking on the mailing list was the trigger for > > the amount of time I spent on the transliteration of Larry's > > perl-lecture, by the way.) > > > > So the only thing anyone looking for volunteers can do, is to ask > > nicely, kindly probe the volunteers, and then thank them. There is > > nothing like feedback and email of appreciation for any volunteer > > activity. > > >
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
Nadav Har'El wrote: On Tue, Mar 21, 2006, Omer Zak wrote about "Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]": 4. Maybe there is another solution of which I did not think? The best thing to do is to write a Hebrew speech-to-text software! I'm not saying it is easy (very far from it...) but it's the best thing for the long run. My belief (which I outlined on this list about a year ago) is that in the future, speech interfaces will be much more common than they are today, and free software will absolutely need text-to-speech and speech-to-text implementations. There is such commercial software for English. However, I'm not sure how useful it would be for recorded lectures. It requires training for each individual user, and the company gives a full refund to people who can't train the program within a certain amount of time. I know of a few people who are quite happy with it. -- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 19:33 +0200, Alon Altman wrote: >I fully agree with Orna on this. This is against the FOSS spirit. If at > all, the government should be supplying the deaf with the tools to > transcribe audio when needed (in the US they do via "relay calls"). A free > software approach to this issue would be similar to what project guntenberg > uses (http//www.pgdp.org/) which is cutting the work to small peices for > volunteers to work on, WITHOUT limiting access to the originals. The suggestion to tie access was only one possible solution (and bad one due to technical reasons) to the problem of motivating volunteers. Other suggestions are welcome. > However, > even this may not be cost effective. The community as a whole will benefit > more from these volunteers' time if they would have contributed in other > means, such as writing software or localization, which outweighs Omer Zak's > personal wishes to hear a lecture. My personal wishes?! My inconsidrate whim to be included in the community rather than be excluded? After all the effort my educators spent on me in getting me to study in normal schools and learning to lipread and speak to my best ability, with the goal of integrating me in the wide community. If any of you is parent of a deaf child, you probably find it difficult to accept that your deaf child should have access to Sign Language and be part of the Deaf Community. It is probable that none of you is parent of a deaf child, but you probably know relatives or friends who have deaf children and are faced with the dilemma of trying to integrate their child into the wide community versus isolating them in the Deaf Community. Ask those parents what they want for their children (but without trusting vaportechnological wishes for technology which solves all problems and which is just hiding behind the corner). Then look at them straight in the eye and tell them that their deaf children will not be able to access the content of the lectures recorded in audio files. About 10% of the general population have varying degrees of hearing impairment. While my degree of hearing impairment is the fate of about 0.1% of the population, few percent have sufficiently bad hearing to be unable to benefit from, or avoid coming to lectures. You do not see other people with disabilities, but they exist. This E-mail message is being BCC'ed to few deaf software developers, who currently do not feel enough self-confidence to participate in the Free Software related meetings, discussions or forums. Consider that some of those people might contribute to Hamakor's pool of volunteers, for tasks and projects which are not related to deafness. But they cannot contribute without access to the information, which they need in order to contribute. >"Discrimination" is not a problem here. There will always be people for > which the information will not be accesible, say people who don't know > English, or people who do not have a programming background. I refuse to accept this attitude! A better attitude would be "yes, this is a problem. Let's continue looking for a good solution to the problem". I do not accept the attitude of "let's do nothing, and leave people with 'difficult' disabilities out in the cold". Enlisting volunteers for transcribing all lectures does not necessarily come at expense of other voluntary activities of the community, because some people do not have other skills, which they can volunteer. For other people this may be a gentle introduction into the world of voluntary work. Eventually they'll graduate to heavier volunteer work. How about looking for, and listing benefits from textual transcripts, which people with normal hearing may get. For example: - Much shorter files, faster to download. - Ability to speed-read by busy people. - Maybe other benefits, which occur to the creative minds so abundant among Hamakor members? This is another approach to solving the problem of justifying the effort of transcribing lectures. --- Omer - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
I fully agree with Orna on this. This is against the FOSS spirit. If at all, the government should be supplying the deaf with the tools to transcribe audio when needed (in the US they do via "relay calls"). A free software approach to this issue would be similar to what project guntenberg uses (http//www.pgdp.org/) which is cutting the work to small peices for volunteers to work on, WITHOUT limiting access to the originals. However, even this may not be cost effective. The community as a whole will benefit more from these volunteers' time if they would have contributed in other means, such as writing software or localization, which outweighs Omer Zak's personal wishes to hear a lecture. "Discrimination" is not a problem here. There will always be people for which the information will not be accesible, say people who don't know English, or people who do not have a programming background. Alon On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Orna Agmon wrote: Hi Omer, You suggest limiting the availability of recorded lectures until transcribed. This witholding of information will only cause the recorded lectures to be made available through other channels rather than the official one, because information will leak. Also, at the cost of making sure that the deaf have the lecture transcribed quickly, you suggest delaying it for many others. You suggest forcing people who want to listen to the lecture to "pay" by transcribing it, while this is not their itch at all. This is completely against the spirit of free software. You know I have volunteered in the past to trnascribe meetings for you (from which others have enjoyed as well), but I personally refuse to be forced to "volunteer". Even if I refuse to volunteer to transcribe, you already plan for me as [EMAIL PROTECTED] the job of dividing a lecture into tiny tidbits, spreading the work to volunteers and assembling it together, if I get your idea correctly. My work on Haifux, as well as my work on Hamakor, is all volunteer work as it is, and this means doing about 20 times work per lecture as I do today. You say you "have a life" and does not have time to put in effort for this cause (for example by writing the software to do it). Splitting the work among athoer people does not make the work less, rather the opposite, it has an overhead. We are not talking about donating free computer cycles like [EMAIL PROTECTED], but about forcing actual people to volunteer. It is like saying that every person can give 10 shekels, in order for one person to be really rich. Obviously, you cannot do the manual work you suggest yourself. However, this case is similar to the case where a person does not have the ability to make a software change him/herself, because (s)he cannot program. In this case, the obvious solution is to pay a programmer for this service. Many FOSS - supporting companies make their living like this. You compare the accesability of a volunteer site or a volunteer organization like Haifux with the accesability of a public building. You compare the transcription to having an elevator, which is the right of those who cannot climb stairs to have. This comparison is misleading, since when a building is built, and especially out of tax money or using a government permit for a public place (like a cinema), this building has a budget. Caring for those who cannot climb stairs means allocating a part of this budget towards this purpose. Haifux does not have a budget, so demanding hours of work is inappropriate. I agree that you have a case when we are talking about organizing an event with budget. But demanding "volunteer" work just does not work. Orna. -- Orna Agmon http://ladypine.org/ http://haifux.org/~ladypine/ ICQ: 348759096 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://8ln.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play. -- William Congreve - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 18:27 +0200, Orna Agmon wrote: > On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Omer Zak wrote: > > > 2. Money to pay for paid work transcribing lectures: from where will > > the budget come? If there are more lectures than budget, how to select > > which lectures to transcribe? > > > > 3. The solution which I suggest is as follows: > > After the lecture is recorded, make the recording available only to > > volunteers, each of whom is to agree to transcribe say 5-minute or > > 10-minute segment of the lecture, in exchange for early access to the > > lecture and for giving them credit for transcribing it. Once the > > transcribing work is done, make the audio recording and the textual > > transcription available together to the Web surfing world. > > [If the lecture is in English, the transcribers can first run > > speech-to-text software on it and then manually fix its mistakes.] > > > > Hi Omer, > > The system you drive at is unstable and cannot work. Do you have a better idea? > You suggest limiting the availability of recorded lectures until > transcribed. This witholding of information will only cause the recorded > lectures to be made available through other channels rather than the > official one, because information will leak. I agree that this is (can be) a problem. Need a better idea. Maybe we can set up a system of usernames, and when people download a the audio recording of a lecture, the Web server will give higher priority to people, who transcribed more minutes of previous lectures? > Also, at the cost of making > sure that the deaf have the lecture transcribed quickly, you suggest > delaying it for many others. If there is enough motivation to volunteer, the delay will not be that long. The first 17:25 minutes of Larry Wall's lecture were transcribed in 10 days by 9 different volunteers (isn't it nice that http://wiki.osdc.org.il/ has an history page?). And this was without the benefit of external motivations at all. If we can motivate people, then 1-hour lecture transcribing job should be complete within less a week. > You suggest forcing people who want to listen to the lecture to "pay" by > transcribing it, while this is not their itch at all. This is completely > against the spirit of free software. This is similar in spirit to projects, in which the software developer says something like "after I get $20,000 in donations/sales, I'll release the software under GPL". There were such projects in the past, but I understand that they were not successful. This did not become a viable Free Software business model. But this was not due to moral problems. One part of my suggestion was that after the entire lecture has been transcribed, it is "unlocked" and becomes available to all comers (including the deaf users of the textual transcription). > You know I have volunteered in the > past to trnascribe meetings for you (from which others have enjoyed as > well), but I personally refuse to be forced to "volunteer". I know and appreciate your efforts. > Even if I > refuse to volunteer to transcribe, you already plan for me as > [EMAIL PROTECTED] the job of dividing a lecture into tiny tidbits, > spreading the work to volunteers and assembling it together, if I get your > idea correctly. Nadav (in other E-mail messages) suggested that software be written to handle those administrative details. I already agreed to work on writing it. So my plans for you as a webmaster are limited to essentially one-time tasks: 1. Install the software. 2. Decide to implement any policies needed to get the software to accomplish its mission. > You say you "have a life" and does not have time to put in effort for this > cause (for example by writing the software to do it). I do not have the time to enlist volunteers to transcribe each lecture. This is repeating task. Writing the software is one-time task, and the software can be useful also for deaf people in other countries. > Splitting the work > among athoer people does not make the work > less, rather the opposite, it has an overhead. I agree, and this is why I was glad to see Nadav's suggestion to develop software for this purpose. > We are not talking about > donating free computer cycles like [EMAIL PROTECTED], but about forcing actual > people to volunteer. It is like saying that every person can give 10 > shekels, in order for one person to be really rich. This is more like asking everyone to give 10NIS to help someone, who needs an expensive medical procedure, for which no insurance is available. Making a lecture accessible to a deaf person is not about making him richer than other people. It is about pulling him from below to a level equal to that of his hearing fellows. > You compare the accesability of a volunteer site or a volunteer > organization like Haifux with the accesability of a public building. You > compare the transcription to having an elevator, which is the right of > those who cannot climb stairs to have.
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Omer Zak wrote: > 2. Money to pay for paid work transcribing lectures: from where will > the budget come? If there are more lectures than budget, how to select > which lectures to transcribe? > > 3. The solution which I suggest is as follows: > After the lecture is recorded, make the recording available only to > volunteers, each of whom is to agree to transcribe say 5-minute or > 10-minute segment of the lecture, in exchange for early access to the > lecture and for giving them credit for transcribing it. Once the > transcribing work is done, make the audio recording and the textual > transcription available together to the Web surfing world. > [If the lecture is in English, the transcribers can first run > speech-to-text software on it and then manually fix its mistakes.] > Hi Omer, The system you drive at is unstable and cannot work. I will relate to your claims here both as a FOSS person and as Haifux scheduler. You suggest limiting the availability of recorded lectures until transcribed. This witholding of information will only cause the recorded lectures to be made available through other channels rather than the official one, because information will leak. Also, at the cost of making sure that the deaf have the lecture transcribed quickly, you suggest delaying it for many others. You suggest forcing people who want to listen to the lecture to "pay" by transcribing it, while this is not their itch at all. This is completely against the spirit of free software. You know I have volunteered in the past to trnascribe meetings for you (from which others have enjoyed as well), but I personally refuse to be forced to "volunteer". Even if I refuse to volunteer to transcribe, you already plan for me as [EMAIL PROTECTED] the job of dividing a lecture into tiny tidbits, spreading the work to volunteers and assembling it together, if I get your idea correctly. My work on Haifux, as well as my work on Hamakor, is all volunteer work as it is, and this means doing about 20 times work per lecture as I do today. You say you "have a life" and does not have time to put in effort for this cause (for example by writing the software to do it). Splitting the work among athoer people does not make the work less, rather the opposite, it has an overhead. We are not talking about donating free computer cycles like [EMAIL PROTECTED], but about forcing actual people to volunteer. It is like saying that every person can give 10 shekels, in order for one person to be really rich. Obviously, you cannot do the manual work you suggest yourself. However, this case is similar to the case where a person does not have the ability to make a software change him/herself, because (s)he cannot program. In this case, the obvious solution is to pay a programmer for this service. Many FOSS - supporting companies make their living like this. You compare the accesability of a volunteer site or a volunteer organization like Haifux with the accesability of a public building. You compare the transcription to having an elevator, which is the right of those who cannot climb stairs to have. This comparison is misleading, since when a building is built, and especially out of tax money or using a government permit for a public place (like a cinema), this building has a budget. Caring for those who cannot climb stairs means allocating a part of this budget towards this purpose. Haifux does not have a budget, so demanding hours of work is inappropriate. I agree that you have a case when we are talking about organizing an event with budget. But demanding "volunteer" work just does not work. Orna. -- Orna Agmon http://ladypine.org/ http://haifux.org/~ladypine/ ICQ: 348759096 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 16:12 +0200, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 02:01:46PM +0200, Omer Zak wrote: > > However, introduction of audio recordings, without immediately > > accompanying them with textual transcripts, has the effect of > > disfranchising me and other deaf software developers, making us less > > human, less valuable than you hearies. In the long range, this can > > adversely affect also our being able to be employed (or get freelance > > projects) and earn money. > > Omer, I disagree with you. I understand the situation you are in, and > the benefit that having them presented in text, video (so you could lip > read) or signed video. For those that are not familar with the term it > means a picture in the corner of a person translating the lecture into > sign language, and has nothing to do with PGP. :-) > > However there is value to the world in general to have the audio recordings, > or podcasts as they have become called, posted as soon as possible. Do you have another suggestion how to encourage people to volunteer to transcribe the lectures ASAP? Bear in mind the experience of the Larry Wall's lecture ( http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Larry_Wall_-_Present_Continous% 2C_Future_Perfect), in which only 37:53 minutes (out of 72:39 minutes) were transcribed by volunteers. Without a better idea, there are two conflicting values. * On one hand, the information should be made available on-line ASAP. * On the other hand, delaying the sound recording until the corresponding textual transcription is available will make the textual transcription available before Messiah's arrival day. > Since the > lectures are, I assume in Hebrew, they would be as worthless to me as you. > This does not detract from their intrinsic value. I was going to say "There is a difference - you probably can learn Hebrew but I cannot learn to hear" but there are some people, who have learning disabilities which makes it very difficult for them to learn a foreign language. It would be nice to be able to accommodate also them. But they can choose to live where most of the people speak their mother tongue and lecture in that tongue. Deaf people have a problem no matter where they live (except for the small and rare communities, in which there is high percentage of deaf people and everyone knows Sign Language). By the way, I agree to volunteer some of my time to translate (from hebrew into English) parts of lectures, once they have been transcribed from sound into Hebrew text. > Yes, there would be more value to them if they were available in text, or > English or Russian translation, etc. > > While I think there should be some effort made to accommodate you and other > people who need extra effort to be accommodated, I don't think they should > be delayed because they are not. Geoff, if you do not want to delay yet solve the problem which I raised, please suggest another idea how to encourage people to volunteer to spend few extra minutes in order to make textual transcriptions of lecture segments. > Since I really don't know much about the educational system here, I can't > be more precise, but is there a school for teachers of the death that > might provide as part of their training an on site signer? There are courses for Sign Language interpreters. This is a separate skill from that involved in teaching deaf children. Most of the interpreters are not fluent in the professional terminology, which we require, and several words do not have representations in Israeli Sign Language. --- Omer -- Delay is the deadliest form of denial.C. Northcote Parkinson My own blog is at http://tddpirate.livejournal.com/ My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone. They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which I may be affiliated in any way. WARNING TO SPAMMERS: at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 17:10 +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote: > On Tue, Mar 21, 2006, Omer Zak wrote about "Re: Recording the Lecture [was > Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" > on 26 March]]": > > Why should I give up my own life and spend a lot of time on those > > recordings, if the mechanism which I suggested - to ask the first > > 6-12-20 readers to volunteer to transcribe stuff - would solve the > > problem of recruiting volunteers? All it requires is that organizers of > > the lectures agree to enforce this. After all, you need one hour to > > No, it requires someone to write the software to do this. You can't expect > the organizer of a lecture site (say, haifux) to take care of transcribing > 20 lectures each divided into 20 parts and remember who promised to do what - > while it's very easy to write software that does it (every downloader that > clicks on "I agree to transcribed" is sent a 3 minute file and asked to > transcribed it, sent reminders if he doesn't do it, and finally this > portion is sent to another person, and so on). You also can't rely on > the individual lectures - those often volunteer to give a 60 minute lecture, > and after that's over, they don't want anything to do with setting up > a site and things like that. Bravo! Now we are actually diving into details, which will hopefully lead to a good solution of the problem. I'll work on most of the technical aspects of the problem - this is one-time effort. I'll need help in the design part from someone like you (Nadav) who will be representative of the prospective volunteer transcribers. Someone to represent the side of lecture organizers will be welcome as well. Someone to represent the Hamakor Web site and the Israeli LUG Web site webmasters will be needed as well, because the solution needs to be integrated into their Web sites. We can also try to design a system, in which transcribers will have incentives to put in more effort than the minimum we ask from them. We need also a system for quality control of the volunteers' work. Question: do we want to provide to the lecturers also the service of translating their lectures into English, and expose them to international audience? If yes, we can use the same mechanism to lock both sound recordings and Hebrew text transcriptions until the English translations are available. > > I have a life, and I do not want to spend too much of my time on wars to > > Your suggestion doesn't require "wars". But it requires someone to write > software. Since free software works on the basis of "scratching your own > itch", you need someone with this itch to go ahead write this software - > or you can decide to do it yourself. OK. Remember that the full solution requires integration of software with organizationware and policyware. The organizers of LUG lectures need to agree to release sound recordings of the lectures only via the proposed system. Good design needs to be made to make the system friendly for all parties involved. > > I expect software to always have also text I/O capabilities, not to have > > a regression of dropping text I/O capabilities. This is not only for > > the deaf but also for the mute and for noisy offices and the like. > > Indeed, but when the day comes that "ordinary" (hearing and speaking) users > interact with MS-Windows 2015 using a speech interface and Linux doesn't > have it, we (free software) will be in a big problem. I do not see a danger of this happening. When they build elevators and ramps in buildings to make them accessible to wheelchaired people, they do not tear down the stairs. The stairs stay in place for those, who have full use of their legs. On the other hand, it already happened to the blind that they were disfranchised by the move from text-based software to Windows-based software several years ago. I do not want to see this happen to the deaf. --- Omer - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, Mar 21, 2006, Omer Zak wrote about "Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]": > Why should I give up my own life and spend a lot of time on those > recordings, if the mechanism which I suggested - to ask the first > 6-12-20 readers to volunteer to transcribe stuff - would solve the > problem of recruiting volunteers? All it requires is that organizers of > the lectures agree to enforce this. After all, you need one hour to No, it requires someone to write the software to do this. You can't expect the organizer of a lecture site (say, haifux) to take care of transcribing 20 lectures each divided into 20 parts and remember who promised to do what - while it's very easy to write software that does it (every downloader that clicks on "I agree to transcribed" is sent a 3 minute file and asked to transcribed it, sent reminders if he doesn't do it, and finally this portion is sent to another person, and so on). You also can't rely on the individual lectures - those often volunteer to give a 60 minute lecture, and after that's over, they don't want anything to do with setting up a site and things like that. > I have a life, and I do not want to spend too much of my time on wars to Your suggestion doesn't require "wars". But it requires someone to write software. Since free software works on the basis of "scratching your own itch", you need someone with this itch to go ahead write this software - or you can decide to do it yourself. > I expect software to always have also text I/O capabilities, not to have > a regression of dropping text I/O capabilities. This is not only for > the deaf but also for the mute and for noisy offices and the like. Indeed, but when the day comes that "ordinary" (hearing and speaking) users interact with MS-Windows 2015 using a speech interface and Linux doesn't have it, we (free software) will be in a big problem. Like you, I hope that serial text interfaces (i.e., "the command line") will continue to live forever and we'll continue to be able to do almost everything through it. This will be best for the blind, deaf, and Unix diehards like myself :) -- Nadav Har'El| Tuesday, Mar 21 2006, 21 Adar 5766 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Today is the tomorrow you worried about http://nadav.harel.org.il |yesterday, and now you know why. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 15:39 +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote: > On Tue, Mar 21, 2006, Omer Zak wrote about "Re: Recording the Lecture [was > Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" > on 26 March]]": > > However, introduction of audio recordings, without immediately > > accompanying them with textual transcripts, has the effect of > > disfranchising me and other deaf software developers, making us less > > human, less valuable than you hearies. In the long range, this can > > adversely affect also our being able to be employed (or get freelance > > projects) and earn money. > > Omer, while I feel your pain, I fail to understand how this is any different > from what happens in real-life presentation, where you DO NOT have transcripts > of the talk, just the slides that accompany them. I can (if I choose to attend the presentation) bring with me an interpreter or a notetaker. This is costly and I would be happy to eliminate the cost, but it is another war to be fought at another time. Deaf people visiting the Web site holding the recording of past presentations do not have this option. > If you already are used to > somehow understanding real-life presentations (e.g., by reading the slides > and asking the person next to you for clarifications), This is not an option. It is like expecting wheelchaired people to ask for help climbing stairs to reach places which they want to, instead of installing elevators and ramps. Nowadays it is not acceptable to expect people with disabilities to ask for help to overcome roadblocks presented by inaccessible surroundings. Help may not be available or competent or be delivered by patient&cheerful people (not preoccupied with their own problems) precisely at the moment they need the help. > can't you understand > recorded presentations (which are accomapnie with slides) in a similar > manner? No, my hearing is not good enough. If I buttonhole an hearing person to transcribe for me the presentation, that person needs to be sufficiently fluent in the subject matter to do a reasonably good job (by the way, some people had the experience of a typist not fluent with the subject matter when they volunteered to edit the transcripts which my typist prepared from August Penguin 4; the amount of work required was too big for them and they produced nothing at the end). > I agree with you that we should do whatever possible to not add additional > burdens to deaf people, but there's no point in pretending that there won't > be things that will be useful only for hearing people. Similarly, all software > that deals with music, mp3 playing, and so on, is only of use to hearing > people - but I don't suppose you say we should ban that as well... Get real, this is a lecture with subject matter which has textual representation. Not a concert. Not even a lecture about computer-generated music. If you plan to hold a lecture about computer-generated music, large part of which will be to demonstrate all those computer-generated sounds, I hereby declare that for that particular lecture, I am not expecting a textual transcript. > > This is similar to the effect on the deaf of introduction of telephones > > in the latter part of 19th century. Before telephones, the deaf were > > almost equal to the hearing. However, telephones put a large distance > > between the hearing and the deaf. Only in recent years, did this gap [... snipped ...] > By the way, a different way to look at it is that before telephones, the > *blind* had a very hard time because communication was done through letters > and telegrams, and the telephone was a blessing to them. The blind had helluva of a time from the time the telephone was invented until MS-Windows 3.1. Now the blind are playing catchup, and I support their efforts (see other E-mail messages from me, and see the accessibility lectures which I was involved with - to see that I try to help people with all kinds of disabilities). But empowering the blind does not compensate for disfranchising the deaf. > In other words, > each new medium is a blessing for one part of the population, and all-in- > all is a blessing to everyone because now everyone can use one of these > medias to communicate (the blind can use the phone, the deaf can still > write letters). The deaf and blind shouldn't lament the fact that they > can't use one of the two media, but rather be happy that they can use > the other one... At least, this is my opinion. Provided that the other media is available. In the case of the lecture recordings, there will be no "other media" unless we solve the problem which I have raised. > > 3. The solution which I suggest is as follows: > > After the lecture is recorded, make the recording available only to > > volunteers, each of whom is to agree to transcribe say 5-minute or > > 10-minute segment of the lecture, in exchange for early access to the > > lecture and for giving them credit for transcribin
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
On Tue, Mar 21, 2006, Omer Zak wrote about "Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]": > However, introduction of audio recordings, without immediately > accompanying them with textual transcripts, has the effect of > disfranchising me and other deaf software developers, making us less > human, less valuable than you hearies. In the long range, this can > adversely affect also our being able to be employed (or get freelance > projects) and earn money. Omer, while I feel your pain, I fail to understand how this is any different from what happens in real-life presentation, where you DO NOT have transcripts of the talk, just the slides that accompany them. If you already are used to somehow understanding real-life presentations (e.g., by reading the slides and asking the person next to you for clarifications), can't you understand recorded presentations (which are accomapnie with slides) in a similar manner? I agree with you that we should do whatever possible to not add additional burdens to deaf people, but there's no point in pretending that there won't be things that will be useful only for hearing people. Similarly, all software that deals with music, mp3 playing, and so on, is only of use to hearing people - but I don't suppose you say we should ban that as well... > This is similar to the effect on the deaf of introduction of telephones > in the latter part of 19th century. Before telephones, the deaf were > almost equal to the hearing. However, telephones put a large distance > between the hearing and the deaf. Only in recent years, did this gap This is extremely ironic, because Alexander Graham Bell is wildly seen as a supporter of the deaf. By the way, a different way to look at it is that before telephones, the *blind* had a very hard time because communication was done through letters and telegrams, and the telephone was a blessing to them. In other words, each new medium is a blessing for one part of the population, and all-in- all is a blessing to everyone because now everyone can use one of these medias to communicate (the blind can use the phone, the deaf can still write letters). The deaf and blind shouldn't lament the fact that they can't use one of the two media, but rather be happy that they can use the other one... At least, this is my opinion. > 1. Suppressing audio recordings would solve the discrimination problem, > but would not be good for the blind, busy people (who would like to > listen to the lecture while they are stuck in traffic jams), as well as > hold back technological progress. I'm glad you see this "solution" as nonsensical and can lead to absurdities like the mp3 example I gave above. > 3. The solution which I suggest is as follows: > After the lecture is recorded, make the recording available only to > volunteers, each of whom is to agree to transcribe say 5-minute or > 10-minute segment of the lecture, in exchange for early access to the > lecture and for giving them credit for transcribing it. Once the > transcribing work is done, make the audio recording and the textual > transcription available together to the Web surfing world. > [If the lecture is in English, the transcribers can first run > speech-to-text software on it and then manually fix its mistakes.] This is a great idea. Now it's up to you: round up the volunteers and start distributing work! > 4. Maybe there is another solution of which I did not think? The best thing to do is to write a Hebrew speech-to-text software! I'm not saying it is easy (very far from it...) but it's the best thing for the long run. My belief (which I outlined on this list about a year ago) is that in the future, speech interfaces will be much more common than they are today, and free software will absolutely need text-to-speech and speech-to-text implementations. -- Nadav Har'El| Tuesday, Mar 21 2006, 21 Adar 5766 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A man with a watch knows what time it is. http://nadav.harel.org.il |A man with two watches is never sure. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Recording the Lecture [was Re: Date Correction [was Re: Telux: "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation" on 26 March]]
I would like to share with you my feelings about the planned lecture's audio recording. >From the fact that the volunteer work on textual transcript of Larry Wall's lecture (http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Larry_Wall_-_Present_Continous% 2C_Future_Perfect) was not finished so far, I understand that there are not enough volunteers to do similar work on other lectures. Until now, lectures in Israeli Linux/Perl/Python clubs were either available (after the fact) as presentations or unavailable. I felt equal to you (as deaf person), because I could read those lectures on the same basis as you could. However, introduction of audio recordings, without immediately accompanying them with textual transcripts, has the effect of disfranchising me and other deaf software developers, making us less human, less valuable than you hearies. In the long range, this can adversely affect also our being able to be employed (or get freelance projects) and earn money. This is similar to the effect on the deaf of introduction of telephones in the latter part of 19th century. Before telephones, the deaf were almost equal to the hearing. However, telephones put a large distance between the hearing and the deaf. Only in recent years, did this gap get closed, thanks to newer technologies (modems, Internet, IM applications, SMS). I hope you agree with me that there is a problem! Now, let's think about solutions to the problem. 1. Suppressing audio recordings would solve the discrimination problem, but would not be good for the blind, busy people (who would like to listen to the lecture while they are stuck in traffic jams), as well as hold back technological progress. 2. Money to pay for paid work transcribing lectures: from where will the budget come? If there are more lectures than budget, how to select which lectures to transcribe? 3. The solution which I suggest is as follows: After the lecture is recorded, make the recording available only to volunteers, each of whom is to agree to transcribe say 5-minute or 10-minute segment of the lecture, in exchange for early access to the lecture and for giving them credit for transcribing it. Once the transcribing work is done, make the audio recording and the textual transcription available together to the Web surfing world. [If the lecture is in English, the transcribers can first run speech-to-text software on it and then manually fix its mistakes.] 4. Maybe there is another solution of which I did not think? Thanks, --- Omer On Mon, 2006-03-20 at 21:47 +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote: > Hi all! > > We would like to make an audio recording of the lecture. Can anyone bring a > PDA or a digital sound recorder to record the lecture? > > Regards, > > Shlomi Fish > > On Sunday 19 March 2006 15:03, Shlomi Fish wrote: > > On Sunday 19 March 2006 11:30, Shlomi Fish wrote: > > > The Tel Aviv Linux Club (Telux - http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/ ) > > > will gather again to hear the presentation of Vitaly Karasik about > > > "Linux Kernel Tuning and Customisation". > > > > > > The presentation will take place on Sunday, 12 March 2006, at 18:30, in > > > room 007 of the Schreiber building in Tel Aviv University. More details > > > can be found on the site. > > > > I apologise for the mistake, but the lecture will take place at 26 March > > 2006 and not at 12 March 2006 (Naturally). > > > > And again note that we have moved to Schreiber 007. > > > > Thanks for Eli Marmor and others for noticing this. > > > > Regards, > > > > Shlomi Fish - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: בקשה ממתחזק אתר המראה request from the admin of mirror.hamakor.org.il
Shai Berger wrote: Shachar Shemesh wrote: Eran Tromer wrote: הי, כמשמדובר בכתובת שהוזנה ל-2urpmi/up2date/apt/yum/smart/... במאות מחשבים, כדאי אולי גם לשים HTTP redirect מהכתובת הישנה לחדשה. לפחות apt לא מעכל 404 או 403 כמו שצריך. ניסיתי את זה עוד כשאני ניהלתי את המראות. אולי עדיף לאמר - apt לא עיכל 404 ו-403 כמו שצריך. אני לא יודע איך המצב עכשיו. איך הוא אמור לעכל 404 או 403? הקודים של redirect הם 301, 302 ו-307. טעות שלי. לזאת התכוונתי. שחר
Re: בקשה ממתחזק אתר המראה request from the admin of mirror.hamakor.org.il
Shachar Shemesh wrote: Eran Tromer wrote: הי, כמשמדובר בכתובת שהוזנה ל-2urpmi/up2date/apt/yum/smart/... במאות מחשבים, כדאי אולי גם לשים HTTP redirect מהכתובת הישנה לחדשה. לפחות apt לא מעכל 404 או 403 כמו שצריך. ניסיתי את זה עוד כשאני ניהלתי את המראות. אולי עדיף לאמר - apt לא עיכל 404 ו-403 כמו שצריך. אני לא יודע איך המצב עכשיו. איך הוא אמור לעכל 404 או 403? הקודים של redirect הם 301, 302 ו-307.
